Experts Say ECs Case Is a Hard Sell

Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan published this trenchant post, providing valid points that skewer the
concerns the Commission is fielding from shopping sites.
"A search engine's job is to point you to destination sites that have
the information you are seeking, not to send you to other search engines,"
Sullivan wrote. "Getting upset that Google doesn't point to other search
engines is like getting upset that The New
York Times doesn't simply have headlines followed by a single paragraph of
text that says, -read about this story
in The Wall Street Journal.'"

Google also pointed out in its blog post that a lot of the antitrust
allegations and investigations the company faces are steeped in the fact that
the company has grown so large.

The search engine controls 66 percent of U.S. search (more overseas),
employs almost 24,000 people and is expanding its search ad purview into mobile
sectors.
Indeed, Susquehanna Research analyst Marianne Wolk said Google's lion's
share of global search queries and search ads have meant it has faced
significant regulatory scrutiny for some time and is likely to continue to do
so.
"In this sense, today's announcement is not -new news' to most
investors," Wolk wrote in a research note Nov. 30.
But size alone does not make one a monopoly; it is the action an entity
takes to get there. Google has tried to be cautious in this regard, even as it
has misstepped in matters of privacy with Google Buzz and Google Street View.
However, there has been no incontrovertible proof that Google has done the competition
wring. Such a finding of guilt by the EC would be incredibly damaging for
Google, costing it search partnerships and money.
The Commission-which has fined Intel and Microsoft more than $2 billion for
abusing their positions in their respective markets-reserves the right to fine
companies up to 10 percent of annual revenues for abusing their market power.
Wolk noted that fining Google 10 percent of global sales could cost the
company $2.8 billion, based on the last 12 months of gross GAAP revenue of $28
billion.
This is a pittance of Google's $34 billion in available
cash; the harm to Google's reputation would be much worse.